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Saturday, January 16, 2016

Keeping Track of Things

I have a whole collection of new 2016 wall calendars hanging around my house. There is one next to my computer, staring across the desk at my monthly planner. Then there is one in each bathroom, one in the kitchen, one next to the phone in the dining room, and one (heaven help me, I can't explain why!) above the dryer in the laundry room. I probably don't need to explain why they are all cat calendars, but the question of why I think I need so many cannot be explained by the need for more cat cuteness in my life.

Is that all? Not by any means. I have a deskpad-sized, "doodle-upon," monthly calendar pad on my desk between the keyboard and the monitor screen. In my computer itself, I run "Todoist" (a nagging reminder app for upcoming tasks), plus both a Yahoo and a Google calendar that crop up on my homepage, and both of those feed directly to my phone, my mini iPad, and my watch.

Listed that way, my calendar fixation looks pretty silly, but I discovered today that I am not alone. Apparently the feeling of being overwhelmed by tasks is quite common among other indie writers, and it becomes more intense at this time of year when we look at the months ahead and see nothing but monumental publishing tasks lining up to bury us. I'll be looking at those in more detail later today on "Roundheads and Ramblings."

For me, the month of January has become particularly problematic for two reasons: one related to having a brand new book out and waiting for readers to discover it, and (2) one that is more personal. If you were following me over on my other blog at this time last year, you may remember that I was spending all my time at a hospital with my husband, who was on life-support after a heart operation went bad. The memories of those two devastating weeks of pain, grief, and unthinkable decisions are still very much right under the surface of everything I do. And with all these calendars surrounding me, I can't avoid seeing the anniversaries of his death and funeral.

I can't blame all my calendars on that event. I've always had this need to pin down what comes next. (Go ahead. Call me a control-freak!) But this year, seeing "January" everywhere I look is particularly difficult. All of which is going to say that I won't be blogging much, if at all, until I find myself safely in February. In the meantime, I'll be writing (yes, there's another book in the wings) and updating websites to bear full witness to the appearance of "Yankee Reconstructed."